>>"All documents look the same" >Um, no they don't. Um, yes they do. Don't go getting snitty because a Word doc looks different from a Photoshop doc. What we need is a quick&easy way to tell *which* Word doc it is. This is a bigger issue w/ folders -- I've been petulantly creating custom icons for folders just so they are distinguishable in the Dock. And no, the fact that the folder name shows up when you mouse-over doesn't count.
I can't believe he didn't list DefaultFolder and Ittec with his "superduper gotta have" shareware. Nobody can live without DefaultFolder; Ittec replaces FinderPop, and sure speeds up folder surfing.
As to his Dock comments: yeah it could have been done better (to say the least). In particular, when you pull an icon out of the dock, I'd like to see it "minimize" its way back into the target file's folder or hard drive icon. Then it looks like a "put away" instead of a "oops, you just destroyed that app."
>Yes, things like facts, insight, logic, common sense tend to come across as sacrilegious to those that blindly follow something written 2000 years ago by a bunch of men.
>Remember, God didn't fax the bible to mankind...it was written by a bunch of men wanting to control the masses. And for the past 2000 they did just that. But people are getting smarter and they know they're myths. It's dying out.
Personally I tend to doubt people are getting smarter, more's the pity. But regardless of your feelings about religion, back to the book: it's a terribly written piece of slop. The author did tons of research and apparently felt the need to tell the world everything he'd learned. I mean, really, a one-hour lecture on the history of Mary Magdalene DURING a car chase? (roughly speaking). And every single riddle or clue or whatever was painfully trivial to solve -- trust me, I'm nowhere near being a cryptologist.
They've determined that more people will play when the jackpots are in the $100s of millions, even though the odds are much lower.
I probably shouldn't give away my strategy:-), but here goes: Many people forget an important point about lotteries (or poker games for that matter). The numerical chance of winning is one parameter, but the one less known is the "expected return." This latter is essentially the size of the jackpot divided by the chance of winning. Thus, you're better off playing a 1:1million game w/ a $500,000 jackpot (50% expected return) than a 1:100 game with a $10 jackpot (10% return). Back to those large rollover lottery games: basically, since every ticket bought contributes to the size of the jackpot, but only the tickets i the latest draw can win, your expected return goes way up as the jackpot grows (even taking into account the possibility of a split pot).
Better that we have 8 fingers and four thumbs; the "extra" thumbs outboard of our pinkies but in an opposing joint mirroring the original thumb. That would be an excellent mechanical design.
So I'm brand new to iTunes, but here's what I tried: downloaded a song (paid the full 99 cents for it:-) ), then made a copy of the song file from the Finder. That is, I just copied the "song".m4p file to another directory. Then I opened the copy of the file w/ SoundStudio (supplied w/ my iMac) and did an Export to AIFF format. At this point of course I can import the AIFF into iTunes and have a nice clean "song".m4a file. I'll grant I haven't tried to get a super high-quality music file and compare the sound quality of the final file to the original. So can someone help me out here? Have I a) given up a lot of sound quality? b) broken the DRM? c) revealed my naivety to the entire/. community?:-)
Assuming an average classroom size of 30, that's about 15% more teachers per classroom
Your calculations may be accurate or not, but if you take that 15%, it also works out to (roughly) 15% fewer students per class. This would reduce a class from, e.g., 30 to 25 or 26. And that's not insignificant.
In High-tech Heretic Stoll does a quickie calculation to compare the cost of computer installation (computers, network, software, maintenance) with the number of textbooks and general library books a school could buy. There's no doubt that books are a far better deal. Not to mention that books last a lot longer than any software or computer hardware will.
I'm not saying there's no place for computers in school. My kids do some killer data reduction in science classes, but that doesn't mean flooding a school w/ laptops is a good idea.
For example, in some countries children were and are given vaccines agains the polio virus. It has been proven that in wester-european countries, complications from the vaccine cause more problems than the illness itself.
First of all, that's only true *because of* the successful polio vaccination programs of the last 50 years. As immigrants flood in (to Europe, Canada, the US) from non-immunized locations, thedanger of a polio outbreak is quite real.
Second, it is true that the common Salk live-virus vaccine carries more risk than the Sabin dead-virus vaccine. Naturally, Sabin costs more (or did a few years back). A directed switch to dead-virus formulations would remove essentially all risk.
Referring back up the post chain a bit:
educate-yourself.org is a crackpot site. Don't believe things just because they can help you justify not getting an injection or two.
Plus, if someone would bring down launch costs, we could send up giant space trucks who will catch materials launched into LEO by those on the moon.
Or the folks on the moon could launch, errr..., materials into slightly different trajectories and land them (hard:-) ) on designated Terran targets.
Anyone seen Wyoming Knott around the Moonbase recently?
>>If I don't get to the "Save" buttons fast enough, the old "This application isnot responding" window shows up. It's difficult if not impossible at this point to save all edited docs before the OS shuts down or kills the application process prematurely.
>No, it's easy. Either hit Cancel on that dialog (and any others), return to your applications and save or switch to your application while the dialog is open and use the save dialog - the application should close once the save dialog is dismissed.
You're missing the whole point: the user shouldn't have to play that sort of game. The OS should have the "smarts" to make sure apps are done before deciding to force-quit them (which will happen if the user in this scenario doesn't stop the shutdown process). As to the default behavior: I haven't changed a thing, and don't even have admin privs.
(posts on file corruption if power lost when FileVault running) Big Deal. Here is an example of what Win2k does. I've repeated this bug. Open a couple apps, like Word or Powerpoint or something. Open up a few documents in those apps and edit them. Don't hit "Save." Go to ctrl-alt-delete and select Shut Down. The OS sends a quit command to the apps, and the apps throw up the "Save Changes?" dialog window. The problem is: the OS doesn't wait for the apps to quit. If I don't get to the "Save" buttons fast enough, the old "This application isnot responding" window shows up. It's difficult if not impossible at this point to save all edited docs before the OS shuts down or kills the application process prematurely. This is bad; Every MacOS since 6 properly waits for all apps to quit before continuing the shutdown process.
{He used cellphone SmarTraveller to avoid a crash} I drive on and around Rt2 daily. Knowledge of a traffic jam is rarely of much use. Unless you are one of the first to find out, all the alternate routes clog up just as tight. And trust me:-), after 30 years I know every route there is.
{comment about using a magnet} Give me a breaaaaak! Magnets were used at least as far back as the 1950's. They were a lot more useful, so to speak, before flippers made their appearance. As people would say on rec.games.pinball, if you're going to cheat why not just take off the glass and place the ball wherever you want? Magnets. sheesh. You could at least try The Addams Family and see what happens when magnets *under* the playfield are randomly activated.
>>My favorite is to see union thugs driving homeless people down to the polls, and then waiting outside w/ cartons of cigarettes and booze to get votes for the democrats. Nice.
>Well maybe if they did that enough they'd make up for all road blocks around voting booths in black neighboorhoods, or the many thousands of voters who were mistakenly placed on an illegible list for felons.
Uhhh, it was no mistake. The claim made at the time was that the (Florida Republican) folks in charge of voter lists took advantage of a law that lets them kick convicted felons off the list, knocking out anyone from the "wrong" neighborhoods whose name was more or less similar to a convict. The cool part is it's pretty hard to find out you've been de-enrolled 2 weeks before the election, let alone get this error corrected.
These software folks are just beginning to feel the disaster which hit pinball years ago. As pins went electronic (CPU-based operation vs solenoids and cam wheels), the development and production costs went up and up. And just like vids, the perception was that people wanted ever more features and fancy doo-dads in their pinball game. But for some strange reason, humans can't deal with the fact that a quarter is not worth what it was in 1960:-( . So even tho' an inflation-adjusted game of pinball should cost at least a couple bucks, operators are limited to charging 50 or 75 cents per game. This is one of the main reasons pins are disappearing from the scene. In fact, there's only one company still making them -- and it ain't Bally, Williams, or Gottlieb (or Chicago Coin for you cognoscenti out there:-) ).
A human can easily generate a random number. It doesn't mean that every number has an equal probability, however. Just because there are uneven chances doesn't make it not random. A pair of dice is random, right? In the same vein, a human is random.
Computers are pseudo-random because you could predict what value would be output given the "seed"
Well yes and no:-). First off, no person or computer can generate truly random numbers because there are "too many" numbers we can't even name or write down. You know, like fifth root of pi to the e/36.5 power , or like any number of unquantified transcendental numbers.
So the best you can hope for is to select random rationals whose decimal form is N places long or shorter. And even then most computer programs suffer from "cluster" and other problems which make them nonrandom. Do a Google for "Pseudo Random Coins" and " Heiko Bauke" to get a start on this stuff.
I don't know about you, but im realizing the same benefits as they claim you get from LEDs, but my bulbs cost a whopping $2 for a lamp bulb and $3 for a fixture bulb. Flourescent! Cheap, no heat, hard(er) to break.
The main complaint is that all fluorescent (please learn to spell that word, BTW) lights fail to produce a "pleasing" color balance. Most are too blue, producing that well-known "harsh white" glow. Others are far too pink. Further, none of them turn on without noticeable delay; none (or very few) are rated for operation below about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and on the list goes.
And yes they do produce heat. Not to mention all those starters/ballasts which burn out now and then.
Who's with me to get off the network? I got it all figured out. We live in RVs, pay in cash, and use public libraries. And work as freelance technical support using prepaid cellphones. mmwahh hahahah
I know you posted in jest, but you forgot that in theory at least, all public libraries are supposed to log all your online access, card catalog research, and items checked out. (and report said logs to the Acronymic Governmental Agendy Dujour.
But what freedoms did you just lose? If you hadn't read slashdot today would you be able to tell that Florida was using a database? I don't think you would. In fact, this system has been running in various forms for quite some time.
There is no guarenteed right to other people not knowing publicly available facts. Heck, there isn't even a right to privacy in the Constitution. I can still go speak out against any senator/president/governor I want. I still work where I want and spend my money how I want. I don't beleive we've just lost any freedoms.
Neither did the German Jews until it was too late.
Just ask the legal resident aliens who were detained and/or deported without a hearing or access to legal aid. So long as the Gov't uses the (so-called)Patriot Act to arrest and detain any person they want, and to deny access to counsel, you have lost rights. Just because it doesn't affect you this instant doesn't mean you haven't lost it.
FWIW, I personally consider the absolute nonsense one must go thru to board an airplane a loss of personal freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
>>"All documents look the same"
>Um, no they don't.
Um, yes they do. Don't go getting snitty because a Word doc looks different from a Photoshop doc. What we need is a quick&easy way to tell *which* Word doc it is. This is a bigger issue w/ folders -- I've been petulantly creating custom icons for folders just so they are distinguishable in the Dock.
And no, the fact that the folder name shows up when you mouse-over doesn't count.
I can't believe he didn't list DefaultFolder and Ittec with his "superduper gotta have" shareware. Nobody can live without DefaultFolder; Ittec replaces FinderPop, and sure speeds up folder surfing.
As to his Dock comments: yeah it could have been done better (to say the least). In particular, when you pull an icon out of the dock, I'd like to see it "minimize" its way back into the target file's folder or hard drive icon. Then it looks like a "put away" instead of a "oops, you just destroyed that app."
>>It's a pile of sacrilegious hog wash.
>Yes, things like facts, insight, logic, common sense tend to come across as sacrilegious to those that blindly follow something written 2000 years ago by a bunch of men.
>Remember, God didn't fax the bible to mankind...it was written by a bunch of men wanting to control the masses. And for the past 2000 they did just that. But people are getting smarter and they know they're myths. It's dying out.
Personally I tend to doubt people are getting smarter, more's the pity. But regardless of your feelings about religion, back to the book: it's a terribly written piece of slop. The author did tons of research and apparently felt the need to tell the world everything he'd learned. I mean, really, a one-hour lecture on the history of Mary Magdalene DURING a car chase? (roughly speaking). And every single riddle or clue or whatever was painfully trivial to solve -- trust me, I'm nowhere near being a cryptologist.
I recommend reading some Bill Bryson instead.
> The longer they can delay us from further probing their planet, the longer they can keep their privacy.
And I suppose they come around 'probing' us in revenge?
No, they've reached the limit of what anal probing can teach them.
(not my idea; you know what show it's from)
Gee... think a cheap trick, written in VAX command line script, to emulate logons and steal passwords will win me anything? :-)
True, but either way, I'll bet 100 bucks that you won't win the lottery :)
:-)
OK, then I'll bet that if I win I'll win more than you will if you win.
I probably shouldn't give away my strategy
Many people forget an important point about lotteries (or poker games for that matter). The numerical chance of winning is one parameter, but the one less known is the "expected return." This latter is essentially the size of the jackpot divided by the chance of winning. Thus, you're better off playing a 1:1million game w/ a $500,000 jackpot (50% expected return) than a 1:100 game with a $10 jackpot (10% return).
Back to those large rollover lottery games: basically, since every ticket bought contributes to the size of the jackpot, but only the tickets i the latest draw can win, your expected return goes way up as the jackpot grows (even taking into account the possibility of a split pot).
Better that we have 8 fingers and four thumbs; the "extra" thumbs outboard of our pinkies but in an opposing joint mirroring the original thumb. That would be an excellent mechanical design.
So I'm brand new to iTunes, but here's what I tried: :-) ), then made a copy of the song file from the Finder. That is, I just copied the "song".m4p file to another directory. Then I opened the copy of the file w/ SoundStudio (supplied w/ my iMac) and did an Export to AIFF format. /. community? :-)
downloaded a song (paid the full 99 cents for it
At this point of course I can import the AIFF into iTunes and have a nice clean "song".m4a file. I'll grant I haven't tried to get a super high-quality music file and compare the sound quality of the final file to the original.
So can someone help me out here? Have I
a) given up a lot of sound quality?
b) broken the DRM?
c) revealed my naivety to the entire
Thanks for your help.
Your calculations may be accurate or not, but if you take that 15%, it also works out to (roughly) 15% fewer students per class. This would reduce a class from, e.g., 30 to 25 or 26. And that's not insignificant.
In High-tech Heretic Stoll does a quickie calculation to compare the cost of computer installation (computers, network, software, maintenance) with the number of textbooks and general library books a school could buy. There's no doubt that books are a far better deal. Not to mention that books last a lot longer than any software or computer hardware will. I'm not saying there's no place for computers in school. My kids do some killer data reduction in science classes, but that doesn't mean flooding a school w/ laptops is a good idea.
Well that sure takes care of the White House.
First of all, that's only true *because of* the successful polio vaccination programs of the last 50 years. As immigrants flood in (to Europe, Canada, the US) from non-immunized locations, thedanger of a polio outbreak is quite real. Second, it is true that the common Salk live-virus vaccine carries more risk than the Sabin dead-virus vaccine. Naturally, Sabin costs more (or did a few years back). A directed switch to dead-virus formulations would remove essentially all risk.
Referring back up the post chain a bit: educate-yourself.org is a crackpot site. Don't believe things just because they can help you justify not getting an injection or two.
Plus, if someone would bring down launch costs, we could send up giant space trucks who will catch materials launched into LEO by those on the moon. Or the folks on the moon could launch, errr..., materials into slightly different trajectories and land them (hard :-) ) on designated Terran targets.
Anyone seen Wyoming Knott around the Moonbase recently?
>>If I don't get to the "Save" buttons fast enough, the old "This application isnot responding" window shows up. It's difficult if not impossible at this point to save all edited docs before the OS shuts down or kills the application process prematurely.
>No, it's easy. Either hit Cancel on that dialog (and any others), return to your applications and save or switch to your application while the dialog is open and use the save dialog - the application should close once the save dialog is dismissed.
You're missing the whole point: the user shouldn't have to play that sort of game. The OS should have the "smarts" to make sure apps are done before deciding to force-quit them (which will happen if the user in this scenario doesn't stop the shutdown process).
As to the default behavior: I haven't changed a thing, and don't even have admin privs.
(posts on file corruption if power lost when FileVault running)
Big Deal. Here is an example of what Win2k does. I've repeated this bug. Open a couple apps, like Word or Powerpoint or something. Open up a few documents in those apps and edit them. Don't hit "Save." Go to ctrl-alt-delete and select Shut Down. The OS sends a quit command to the apps, and the apps throw up the "Save Changes?" dialog window. The problem is: the OS doesn't wait for the apps to quit. If I don't get to the "Save" buttons fast enough, the old "This application isnot responding" window shows up. It's difficult if not impossible at this point to save all edited docs before the OS shuts down or kills the application process prematurely. This is bad; Every MacOS since 6 properly waits for all apps to quit before continuing the shutdown process.
{He used cellphone SmarTraveller to avoid a crash} :-), after 30 years I know every route there is.
I drive on and around Rt2 daily. Knowledge of a traffic jam is rarely of much use. Unless you are one of the first to find out, all the alternate routes clog up just as tight. And trust me
{comment about using a magnet}
Give me a breaaaaak! Magnets were used at least as
far back as the 1950's. They were a lot more useful, so to speak, before flippers made their appearance.
As people would say on rec.games.pinball, if you're going to cheat why not just take off the glass and place the ball wherever you want?
Magnets. sheesh. You could at least try The Addams Family and see what happens when magnets *under* the playfield are randomly activated.
... then you might want to read Philip K Dick's "Return Match." Then stop and think whether you want to play an alien pinball machine :-)
>>My favorite is to see union thugs driving homeless people down to the polls, and then waiting outside w/ cartons of cigarettes and booze to get votes for the democrats. Nice.
>Well maybe if they did that enough they'd make up for all road blocks around voting booths in black neighboorhoods, or the many thousands of voters who were mistakenly placed on an illegible list for felons.
Uhhh, it was no mistake. The claim made at the time was that the (Florida Republican) folks in charge of voter lists took advantage of a law that lets them kick convicted felons off the list, knocking out anyone from the "wrong" neighborhoods whose name was more or less similar to a convict.
The cool part is it's pretty hard to find out you've been de-enrolled 2 weeks before the election, let alone get this error corrected.
These software folks are just beginning to feel the disaster which hit pinball years ago. As pins went electronic (CPU-based operation vs solenoids and cam wheels), the development and production costs went up and up. And just like vids, the perception was that people wanted ever more features and fancy doo-dads in their pinball game. But for some strange reason, humans can't deal with the fact that a quarter is not worth what it was in 1960 :-( . So even tho' an inflation-adjusted game of pinball should cost at least a couple bucks, operators are limited to charging 50 or 75 cents per game. This is one of the main reasons pins are disappearing from the scene. In fact, there's only one company still making them -- and it ain't Bally, Williams, or Gottlieb (or Chicago Coin for you cognoscenti out there :-) ).
Well yes and no :-). First off, no person or computer can generate truly random numbers because there are "too many" numbers we can't even name or write down. You know, like fifth root of pi to the e/36.5 power , or like any number of unquantified transcendental numbers.
So the best you can hope for is to select random rationals whose decimal form is N places long or shorter. And even then most computer programs suffer from "cluster" and other problems which make them nonrandom. Do a Google for "Pseudo Random Coins" and " Heiko Bauke" to get a start on this stuff.
The main complaint is that all fluorescent (please learn to spell that word, BTW) lights fail to produce a "pleasing" color balance. Most are too blue, producing that well-known "harsh white" glow. Others are far too pink. Further, none of them turn on without noticeable delay; none (or very few) are rated for operation below about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and on the list goes. And yes they do produce heat. Not to mention all those starters/ballasts which burn out now and then.
I know you posted in jest, but you forgot that in theory at least, all public libraries are supposed to log all your online access, card catalog research, and items checked out. (and report said logs to the Acronymic Governmental Agendy Dujour.
Neither did the German Jews until it was too late. Just ask the legal resident aliens who were detained and/or deported without a hearing or access to legal aid. So long as the Gov't uses the (so-called)Patriot Act to arrest and detain any person they want, and to deny access to counsel, you have lost rights. Just because it doesn't affect you this instant doesn't mean you haven't lost it. FWIW, I personally consider the absolute nonsense one must go thru to board an airplane a loss of personal freedom.